Staff Profile

Career Summary

Biography

I am descended from the Ngiyampaa people of New South Wales, from Scottish convicts of the First Fleet, from a Latvian immigrant, and from English people. My birth place is Dubbo and I mainly grew-up around Narromine, although I moved 28 times by the time is was 21 which means that a sense of displacement was a normal feeling in my life. We lived in cars, on river banks, in tents, caravans, rental houses, relatives houses, and in the bush. There was one particular farm we lived-on for awhile - Pippagitta - which I recall fondly because of milking the cow in the morning, walking for miles along the Macquarie river banks looking for good fishing spots for catfish; or finding a clear brook in which to plunge into to leave the scorching gold hush of noon behind me. The country life is still with me even in suburban Newcastle.

The path to being a full-time researcher is not a simple one, nor is there an obvious starting point. However, the impact of a $3 cheque is a defining point for my interest in policy analysis. It is a very clear memory for each fortnight that I received the $3 Aboriginal assisance cheque I proudly deposited into the bank in Narromine. That was empowering because it was an incentive for my persistence in education in a cultural environment where it would have been all to easy to give it away for sport and manual labour jobs. I could see the wrecks of my step-father and my mother who worked those casual manual labor jobs, and so I took it to heart when my Nan said to get a white mans education and make things better for our people.

Thus continuing education over twelve years - PhD thesis (The University of Melbourne) is the last in a series of qualifications from a BSc. in Biochemistry, Honours in Nutrition, and a Master of Public Health degree from the Menzies School of Health Research. Throughout that period I worked in many different roles - health promotion officer at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, administration for the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (Victoria), Policy Officer for the Victorian State Government's (then) Koori Health Unit, Research Assistant at the VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit. Under the guidance and leadership of Professor Ian Anderson, I realised my true pathway of being a research academic. Eventually, after almost a decade of research and learning, I arrived at the idea for the AVID Study which is the pathway I continue today.

Languages

Fields of Research

Memberships

Body relevant to professional practice.

Member - International Network of Social Network Analysts

Collaboration

The AVID Study is about examing collaborative efforts in public health, and how Aboriginal voice is one aspect of the broader governance processes in public health. I use the tools of social network analysis to visualise and mathematically analyse indeterminate concepts such as participation, engagement, collaboration, and so on. Therefore the approach is applicable to any social policy area in Australian society. The central theory that I link to is Anthony Giddens' Structuration Theory, which 'the structuring of social relations through time and space in virtue of the duality of structure.' Therefore, I have an empirical method matched with a social theory. It is exciting, invigorating, engaging. This underlies my motto which is research is super fun!

Administrative

Administrative expertise

Eight years of administrative experience in Indigenous health - from community controlled organisations to state and commonwealth governments to tertiary institutions.

Teaching

Teaching keywords

Health policy

Indigenous health

Teaching expertise

Delivery of Master of Public Health course units to Indigenous Chief Executive Officers for six months in 2003. Numerous guest lectures on aspects of Indigenous health policy.